Offices Held

Biography

Although John Tingleden was of gentle birth, his family’s pedigree is not recorded in the visitation of Surrey taken in 1530. His grandfather Richard Tingleden had sat for Southwark in the Parliament of 1467, and John Tingleden, Member for Reigate in that of 1449, was doubtless his great-grandfather. Henry Tingleden, a justice of the peace from 1514 until his death, appears to have enjoyed greater standing in the county than his son was to attain.4

When Henry Tingleden made his will in 1521 he directed that his son John should receive his inheritance at the age of 18; it consisted of property in Southwark, worth altogether £26 6s.4d. a year, and the manor of Frenches in Reigate. Joan Tingleden took as her second husband John Palmer of Angmering, Sussex, who may have been responsible for John Tingleden’s upbringing. In 1529 Tingleden shared £60 with his brother Thomas and half-brother John Palmer under their grandfather’s will. Almost nothing is known of his career, but he may have been a lawyer: both his father and his son were members of Gray’s Inn and Tingleden could have begun his studies there before 1521, when the admission register begins. He doubtless owed his return for Gatton in 1547 to the patron of the borough, Sir Roger Copley, to whom he was related through his great-grandmother Elizabeth Shelley: part of his manor of Frenches lay in the parish of Gatton. His fellow-Member Richard Shelley was a kinsman and Copley’s brother-in-law: his stepfather John Palmer was one of the knights for Sussex. Tingleden’s death between 18 Aug. 1551, when he made his will, and the following 27 Oct., when probate was granted, created a vacancy for the fourth session of the Parliament which was to be filled by Thomas Guildford, another relative of the Copleys.5

Tingleden’s will opens with a long religious preamble in which he proclaimed his faith in the Trinity and trusted to God’s ‘mercy that he through the merits of Christ’s passion, my only saviour and mediator, will now perform his promise unto me’. He asked to be buried in Reigate church ‘before my wife’s seat there as she cloth use to sit’, and where a brass once recorded the deaths of his parents. He granted to his wife a life interest in the property which was already her jointure, consisting of the manor of Frenches worth £10 a year, tenements in Southwark called the Black Heart and a house there also worth £10 a year; the remainder of this portion of his property he granted to his son Charles and in default of heirs, in turn to his daughter Margaret, his nephew, and his godson Tingleden, the younger son of John Millicent of Linton, Cambridgeshire. Tingleden had other property in Southwark, worth altogether £21 4s. a year, which his son was to receive at the age of 18, and of which his wife was to have the custody in the meantime unless she remarried. He asked for a sermon at his burial and a dole for the poor. After remembering friends, relatives and servants he divided £300 ‘in stock’ equally between his wife, son and daughter. He appointed his wife executrix and John Millicent, (Sir) Thomas Saunders and James Skinner overseers. His widow took as her second husband Nicholas Pope of Buxted, Sussex, by whom she had seven more children.6